Feeding our communities is a highly complex task involving a wide array of stakeholders—including farmers, consumers, grocery stores, CSAs, farmers markets, food pantries, and more. The Covid-19 Pandemic has revealed major vulnerabilities in food systems across the globe, and climate change is threatening to further destabilize these systems. The United …
I grew up in a fairly industrial urban area, where most meals came in a box or a can and fast food was a frequent go-to. My experience may be familiar if you, too, live in an urban community, which tend to lack access to fresh, local food. A …
Springtime in Maine is a beautiful thing. The morning air still holds the chill of winter. The faint scent of green and growing life tiptoes around your nose, suddenly bursting into fullness where a patch of afternoon sun has warmed a budding tree branch. When I lived there, I loved …
“Seeds are living things…intimately connected and intertwined with story, and lineage and place and people” – Rowan White, Sierra Seeds Can you remember the last time you held a seed? We all have ancestors who carried seeds, yet today we have little relationship with the food we eat and the …
GMOs are a hot topic these days. Get in an argument with someone who’s ‘pro-GMO’, and they’re likely to tell you that we’ve been engineering crop genetics since the dawn of agriculture. This argument certainly has a strain of validity to it. But it fails to account for the fact …
By Dr. Jennifer Phillips Over the coming decades, climate change will challenge regional, national, and global economies. Some regions of the world will see agricultural productivity drop by 50% by 2080, while regions will experience increased productivity. Part of the adaptation process will be to build resilience into …
Reposted from Grist By Lindsey Lusher Shute, CEP Alumna ’07 By the time the next Farm Bill expires in five years, 125,000 American farmers will have retired. This fact may well be the biggest threat to national food security, but you wouldn’t know it if you’ve been following this year’s …
On April 18th, the National Climate Seminar hosted a conversation on “Climate and Food Supply” with Cynthia Rosenzweig, leader of the Climate Impacts Group at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies at Columbia University. Rosenzweig’s work has focused on the effects of climate change on systems and sectors that are …
Written by: Nicholas Martin (CSP ’13) and Justin Wexler (EP/MAT ’13) Reposted from: The Poughkeepsie Journal An ancient environmental technology is making a comeback. Five centuries ago, Spanish explorer Francisco de Orellana reported vast areas of indigenous settlement and cultivation along the Amazon River. Surprisingly, the incredibly rich and productive …
My internship with Grow Food Northampton (GFN) involved working on numerous and varied projects, ranging from food access, community outreach, an agricultural economics report, a local foods assessment survey, and a community garden committee. I felt that my work at GFN often related closely to my first year studies at …
